JAKARTA (TheInsiderStories) - An accounting and credit management app for Indonesian micro-businesses, Buku Warung, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from global investors such as DST Global, Soma Capital, Hof Capital, GMO Venture Partners, VentureSouq, 20VC, and angel investors. Is estimating, the funding around US$10 million to $15 million and will be used to hire the technology team.
Angel investors in the round included high-profile founders and executives like Plaid’ co-founder William Hockey, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, Clearbit chairman and startup advisor Josh Buckley, Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra, Adobe chief product officer Scott Belsky, former Uber chief product officer Manik Gupta, Spotify’ former head of new markets in Asia Sriram Krishnan, 20VC founder Harry Stebbings, Nancy Xiao, an investor with Bond Capital, Fast co-founder Allison Barr Allen, from WhatsApp, Square and Airbnb.
Last July, the financial technology firm, has raised Pre-A funding round led by Quona Capital, a VC firm. Involved in the round are the existing investors like East Ventures, AC Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, Tanglin Venture Partners, Michael Sampoerna, also founders of Snapdeal, who are investors in Khatabook, participated in the round.
In Indonesia, 60 million micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) contribute over 60 percent of the country’ $1 trillion gross domestic products (GDP), yet these businesses often rely on manual processes to do their accounting and repayments with customers. Merchants receive 3 times faster repayments and see increased cash flow due to the automatic payment reminders sent by the app.
The app tracks all transactions including credit, expense and sales, and helps merchants get cash flow visibility through business reports. To date, BukuWarungapp has served more than 600,000 merchants across 750 locations in Indonesia.
“Micro-businesses have always been underserved in Indonesia, and have very little access to quality financial services. Our vision is to build the digital infrastructure for 60 million MSMEs in Indonesia, which started with a simple accounting app and digital payments,” says Abhinay Peddisetty, co-founder of BukuWarung in an official statement released today (07/08).
Ganesh Rengaswamy, co-founder and partner at Quona Capital added, “Quona’ experience investing in companies serving micro-businesses across emerging markets—including standouts IndiaMART, Neon (Brazil), and Yoco (Africa)—has shown us how important their success is to the growth of inclusive emerging economies.”
While, Willson Cuaca, co-founder and managing partner of East Ventures stated, that as a market leader, the BukuWarung team is in well positioned to drive the digital transformation of these micro-businesses with fast-paced execution.
Last April, BukuWarung amassing seed funding at an unpublished value in a funding round led by East Ventures. The company used the fresh capital to strengthen its position in the Indonesian market and develop their team in Jakarta.
Peddisetty and Chinmay Chauhan founded BukuWarung at the end of 2019 while the two still worked together at Carousell. Both are professionals with a long track record in the technology industry with experience working on building and developing products and revenues in Grab, Carousell, Belong, and Near.
Lunasbos founder Adjie Purbojati has also joined BukuWarung as a founding team member to accelerate the company’ growth. Lunasbos is a two-way financial recording application which is one of the main players in the accounting service industry for MSMEs in Indonesia.
In the few months since its launch, the BukuWarung application has been used to record cash and credit transactions by 250,000 MSMEs in 500 cities and districts in Indonesia. The majority of stall holders who use BukuWarung are located in tier two and tier three cities.
Written by Editorial Staff, Email: theinsiderstories@gmail.com
